<h1>5B. Share what you learn</h1>
<p>If you capture what you have learned in written or recorded documents, you will be able to
remember from year to year what you have done, what you found worked and what didn't,
and what you plan to do in the future. This will help your current project team over the long
term and will ensure that new project staff will have a record of what you did and what you
learned. Production of formal documents will also help you communicate your findings to
practitioners around the world. Documenting and sharing what you have learned will help
practitioners working under similar conditions, dealing with similar threats, and using similar
tools to benefit from your successes and avoid any pitfalls or problems you may have
encountered during the implementation of your project.</p>
<p>In order to create documents that a variety of audiences will understand, internalize and use,
you must understand how they typically receive messages, and what they would be interested
in learning. Although we present communications as the final step in the cycle, you really
need to be preparing for communicating your results and other relevant project information
much earlier. For example, in Step 2B, you should have identified your audiences for your
monitoring results and what information they would be interested in having. To effectively
reach these audiences, you need a clear communications and dissemination strategy. You
need to decide which lessons you wish to communicate to these priority audiences, determine
the best format to reach each key audience, and then develop and distribute your
communications products. For example, you may use informal communications means (email,
phone calls) to share lessons with your internal audiences (the project staff, partners and
other stakeholders). You should make sure to provide:</p>
<ul><li>Clear management recommendations to all the right people based on your analysis;</li>
<li>Necessary details to help interpret results;</li>
<li>Alternatives and contingencies based on the results; and</li>
<li>Regular reports to all team members.</li></ul>
<p>For communicating and sharing lessons with your external audiences (donors, other
practitioners, broader public), you will probably use more formal communications means
(reports, presentations, videos). Communications products can encompass many different
forms ranging from formal academic papers to stories and videos. It is important to evaluate
each product to see if it effectively communicated your messages and to learn what you
might do to improve similar efforts in the future.</p>
<p>Finally, you should also look to others in the conservation community as sources of
information and learning for your project. Some of the best sources of lessons are the
experiences of others.</p>
Outputs for this standard practice include:
<ul><li>Identification of key audiences.</li>
<li>Development of a communications strategy.</li>
<li>Regular reports or other types of communication to project team members and key
stakeholders.</li>
<li>Development and distribution of appropriate communication products.</li>
<li>Use of other people's communication products.</li></ul>
